Papua New Guinean marine services business, Pacific Towing (‘PacTow’) is performing a growing number of long-distance ocean towage projects, many of which are international. The company has towed all sorts of vessels and ‘structures’ throughout Melanesia, as well as in Australian waters, Indonesia, Micronesia, the American waters of Guam, and Singapore which is where its most recent international towage departed from.
Ocean towage projects performed by PacTow are typically either single-vessel transfers or salvages. However, the company also has a history of tandem towage projects, as well as towing oil rigs, transfer hoses, and mooring buoys for its oil and gas clientele.
Vessel transfers into PNG have increased over the last few years, largely due to logistics and shipping companies wanting to expand and modernise their fleets in order to service major resource developments. Other vessel transfers have been project-specific, for example tugs and barges utilised in port infrastructure upgrades.
Salvage is a core service of PacTow’s and one that frequently requires long distance towage. PacTow Manager, Gerard Kasnari, reports that “many of the vessels we assist, whether they are adrift at sea due to some sort of mechanical failure, or have run aground a reef, are operating hundreds of miles from any kind of port let alone major ports where there are the right kind of repair services. Sometimes we’ll tow a vessel to a small regional port like Rabaul for some initial repairs and then we’ll do a longer tow back to Port Moresby or Lae.”
Depending on the extent of repairs required and under which country the vessel is flagged, PacTow will also transfer salvaged vessels internationally if that’s what the owners want. At times, they’ll just provide an escort service if the vessel can travel under its own power.
PacTow’s most recent international towage project involved picking up a new flat top barge in Singapore for a Port Moresby logistics client. The 70 metre long and 20 metre wide barge was loaded with four smaller vessels – two work boats for the client and another two line boats for PacTow’s operation in Lae.
‘Tavurvur’ one of PacTow’s fleet of Azimuth Stern Drive (ASD) tugs which had recently completed a mandatory four-yearly dry docking in Singapore was utilised for the project. The tow covered approximately 3,000nm and took just over three weeks, including a stopover for fuel, fresh water and food in Makassar, Indonesia.
Kasnari reports that the project went as planned and was relatively unchallenging with the exception of marginal weather (i.e., high winds [25 – 30kt] and large swell [2 – 4m]) between Singapore and Makassar, and another patch of poor weather in the Coral Sea approximately 200nm from Port Moresby.
PacTow’s fleet of tugs, especially its larger and more powerful ASDs, are central to its long-distance ocean towage capacity. Kasnari, points out that the purchase of most of the ASDs has been part of a strategic re-fleeting program that is now two thirds complete. In addition to owning PNG’s largest tug fleet, PacTow has its tugs deployed at each of its five operations throughout PNG, as well as in Solomon Islands. The company has also established a business in Fiji.
